Sorry, Wrong Channel, Ben!
by ThePink1 at Reefside.Net
Summary: Something weird is going on, and it isn't just in Bellwood! SERIOUSLY crack-fic, but guaranteed fun! R & R, please.
1. Chapter 1

**Sorry, Wrong Channel!**

A Crossover fanfic by _A J_

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters, but the plot is all mine.

Prequel Chapter 1

Just after _Race Against Time_:

They'd been trailing the jewelry store 'snatch and scram' thieves for nearly twenty minutes. Finally, it looked like the quartet of crooks had run out of steam in the alleyway up ahead, and Ben and Gwen slowed to a halt behind the nearest dumpster.

"Alright, I'm all for this new 'think it through' phase of yours, Ben, but if we don't do something fast, these creeps are gonna split up and we'll never find them all." Gwen was reciting a kinetic spell under her breath while she waited for her cousin's answer.

"After all that running, I figure you'd appreciate the chance the idiots are giving us to catch our breath," Ben returned sourly. He was grinning over the Omnitrix as he spun through his many choices of alien guises. "Ah-HAH! You want a speedy end to the chase, cuz? XLR8 should do nicely," he continued, settling on the supersonic reptile, and giving the Omnitrix dial its activating push. In a flash of green light, muscles rearranged, bones realigned, and cells reorganized, transforming the otherwise ordinary preteen into his chosen form of …

"Greymatter?! Ah, man, this thing HATES me!" Gwen tried not to giggle too hard at his tinny whine. "And you're enjoying this," he accused, as she reached down and scooped him up.

"How about a lift, 'Hero'?" she snickered, peeking out at the four ski-masked miscreants who were so busy checking out their haul from the jewelry store on an overturned crate that they hadn't even looked up at the flash of green light. Ben just sighed, then perked up as he evaluated his situation at Greymatter-thinking speed.

"Give me your dental floss and a pen from your purse, first, then float me next to the shoes of the one on the left," he instructed. "When you get my signal, tie them up with those discarded packing straps, Gwen," he continued, pointing out several lengths of flat yellow plastic poking out of the next dumpster down the alley.

"Okay, but … what'll be your signal?" she asked, already levitating him over her hand, after handing him his requested tools.

He just turned back to her with a tiny, toothy grin. "You'll know." Gwen sighed and flicked him like a beanie toy towards the skinny guy on the left of the crate.

Settling down between the feet of his target, Ben got to work, running the floss through the laces of the first guy's shoes, then around his ankles, and proceeded to tie him to his three friends, all unnoticed. That done, with only seconds to go on his ten-minute time limit, he squeezed inside the crate they were still checking out their bounty on. _'Gotta lay off the sweets, again, Tennyson. These tiny jobs are getting tough to do,'_ he thought to himself. Just then, the Omnitrix badge stuck to his back beeped, flashed red, and changed him back into his regular 11-year-old self.

Standing straight up, he hoisted the crate straight over his head, startling the four guys even more than his strange beeps had. (They'd each assumed it was one of the other's cell phones.) Trying to jump back from the suddenly rising crate, the crooks found themselves unexpectedly joined at the feet, and flattened all around him in an award-worthy demonstration of theatrical pratfalling. "NOW, GWEN!"

With a shake of her head for his showing off, Gwen flung her hands out, and several strands of industrial packing strips came flying over and tied each of the four thieves up tightly. Ben set the crate back down awkwardly, trying not to spill all the jewelry off the top of it, and then started to write a hurried note on the back of one of the pillowcases the crooks had used in their heist.

"Just call nine-one-one, tell 'em which alleyway needs cleaned up, and we can hopefully get back to the mall before my parents freak out that we went missing right after the robbery. Hey, maybe we can convince them we just got lost in the crowd … again," Ben told his cousin as they made sure the four guys were secured, and all the jewelry was bagged up in the sack with their note scrawled across it: _To the Bellwood PD, from your neighborhood Alien Heroes._

Gwen rolled her eyes. "You don't think it's too subtle, do you?" Instead of his usual blank look, Ben actually chuckled. _'Ha!'_ she thought, smiling. _'That word-a-day calendar I got him for his birthday isn't going to waste, after all.'_ Pulling her new 'emergencies only' phone out, she speed-dialed the Bellwood Police Station, and asked for Officer White.

Barry White was the son of the Middle School Principal, Ed White, who named him after the legendary R & B crooner. Barry was also a Plumber, like his father and the Tennyson's Grandpa Max. So whenever they needed a police officer, he was their natural first choice.

"_Hello, this is Officer … oh, hi, Gwen. You guys caught another one, huh? Four? Oh, no; you two were just at the mall, weren't you? Uhuh. Yeah. Third and Ganymede, behind Granger's Granary. Okay, thanks, Gwen. And thank Ben, too. See you two at the New Year's Bonfire. Be good you two. Bye."_

"Well, that takes care of that," Gwen said, hanging up as they got back to the corner. Ben knelt to tie his shoe, and looked at his watch. (He'd tacky-glued an old wind-up watch face to the band of the Omnitrix in art class, to lend some credibility to wearing the gigantic thing.)

"Geez, Gwen, we've been gone for more than half an hour. Even Sandra and Carl aren't gonna just look the other way _this_ time." His cousin nodded worriedly as he stood up barely in time for the changing light. The pair hurried across the intersection, and started running full out back towards the mall on the far side of main street.

Just as they crossed Second Street, bright lights lit up the sky over Bellwood, looking like the Aurora Borealis come early. _"Bezell's Charms,"_ Gwen had time to utter, before a massive energy wave crashed over Bellwood like an avalanche, battering away all that was before.


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry, Wrong Channel!**

A Crossover fanfic by _A J_

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters, but the plot is all mine.

Prequel Chapter 2

Just after _Race Against Time_:

The massive energy wave crashed over Bellwood like an avalanche, battering away all that was before.

Ben looked up from the ground where he'd fallen. Nothing felt hurt, so whatever that was, it wasn't a bomb, at least not any he'd run across yet. (Unfortunately, with the Omnitrix, Ben had run into _way_ too much military and extraterrestrial ordinance for an eleven-year-old. Heck, he'd seen too much ordinance for a Marine _minesweeper_.) Gwen's slumped form was nearby, her back to him, and her winter coat flopping loose in the early December wind. Even as he was climbing up off the ground, she rolled over and opened her eyes.

One look at each other was all it took.

"_Aaaahh! You're a RAT!!" _theybothscreamed at the same time.

Then, "_What?!"_ They both looked down at themselves, and screamed again.

A passing Doberman Shepherd stopped to see what was going on, then _asked them if they were all right._

Ben and Gwen screamed again at the talking dog, who appeared to be wearing a helmet.

"_Jeesh, sorry I asked,"_ the passerby muttered, and ambled off. Gwen calmed down first, naturally, and gave Ben a wallop when he looked like he couldn't stop hyperventilating.

"Calm down, Doofus! Look!" She aimed one paw at the crowd that had slowly gathered around the screaming preteens. Ben gulped back a gasp at the sight of the gathered … _creatures_ around them. Mammalian, reptilian, some birds, even a couple of _fish(!?!)_ were circled at the intersection. Just then, the cell phone in Gwen's coat pocket went off.

'_Ring ring ring! Phone call, phone call!'_ Gwen fought with her jacket a couple seconds, and the phone tumbled out. With minimal effort, she caught hold of the edge and flipped it open, then lay her head across it. "He-hello?"

"_Gwen? Oh, thank god! Gwendolyn Tennyson, where have you and Ben gotten off to?"_ Her aunt's voice rang out of the tiny cell, making her jump back.

"Aunt Sandra?" Gwen traded scared looks with Ben. "Uh, we took a wrong turn coming out, that's all. We're on the far side of the mall, I think. By …" She looked at her cousin in desperation.

"Pet Corner," Ben supplied with a nervous grin. Gwen repeated it, glaring at him, and told her aunt they'd meet Ben's parents by their car. She hung up, pleading minutes, and stood back up, or at least she tried to. "Four-footed, Gwen," Ben smirked, and took off without her. Gwen growled her frustration; obviously he'd gotten too much practice as Wild Mutt. The altered mode of transportation didn't even phase him.

After sorting her paws out underneath her, she took a better look at the rest of her body. Was it her imagination, or was she … lavender colored? Figuring she better find her way home first, she scampered after Ben with another growl.

_Wrong Channel!_

Max Tennyson sat up in his bunk. Something wasn't right, he could feel it in his ears. Shaking his head, he hopped out of bed, and fell flat on his back when he tried to stand upright. _'What on Earth?'_ he started to wonder, when he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror on the back of the open bathroom door. The only reason he knew it was his right away was the confused expression it wore in its large brown eyes, which he remembered looking at last night when he'd turned in. Looking up and out the window, he barked in surprise. It was apparently _still_ last night, so he couldn't have slept long, after all.

Clambering to all four feet, he stumbled forward to get a better look at his altered self. _'Weird,'_ he thought, cataloging details. He looked canine, almost foxlike, but the colors were all wrong. Black fur, graying around the muzzle and ears. Large golden rings shone in his fur at back and tail, and he could see the edge of another one between his ears on top of his head. The ears were long and straight, almost rabbitlike, and stood straight up in his current worried state. Curious now, he concentrated on just one of them, and tried to get it to turn, like a radar dish, and barked again when it worked. _'Ooookay, I'm a dog. Not a normal one, either,'_ he thought, looking around the rest of his RV home.

The Rustbucket II had changed around him as well. The fixtures he'd been working on adding back into the new RV were all there, alien technology being unaffected by whatever had happened to him in his sleep. But the rest of his new (well, new to _him,_ anyway; the insurance company hadn't been willing to replace a very used camper with the latest model, after all!) RV was apparently scaled to match his new physique. The ceiling was only two-thirds as high as he would have thought it should be given his new four-footed stature. _'Unless I'm still as big as I was as a human?'_ he pondered. He shelved that thought till he could get on the scale to check, and finished examining the main room first.

Everything else looked almost normal, merely scaled down to his new size or shape, like the drawers on everything being lower, with handles he could easily put a forepaw through or grab with his mouth. He hurried past that thought, not ready to dwell on some things yet. Walking to the front of the Rustbucket, he looked over the driving controls, and couldn't hold in another bark of amazement. The whole thing looked like it had been assembled by one of those custom handi-capable outfitters, with extra control handles on the steering wheel and shifter, and extending platforms added to the three pedals (he still preferred to drive a manual transmission) so he could work them from the seat with his considerably shorter hind legs.

'_Okay, that settles that. Whatever happened to me, happened to a whole lot more, or this kind of rig wouldn't even _exist,' he thought. Looking around more, he wondered if it was world-wide, then shuddered at the thought of such a wide-reaching reality shift. _'Oh, this could be bad. I better find out how the kids are taking things.'_ Clambering into the driver's seat, he worked out the controls, turned the engine over, and carefully drove to Frank and Lily's house, hoping the whole way they were untouched by this … _whatever_ it was, but resigned to the worst, just in case.


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry, Wrong Channel!**

A Crossover fanfic by _A J_

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters, but the plot is all mine.

Prequel Chapter 3

Just after _Race Against Time_:

The massive energy wave crashed over Bellwood like an avalanche, battering away all that was before.

Max, Ben and Gwen met hurriedly in front of Gwen's house when Carl and Sandra stopped to drop Gwen off. When his parents objected to him climbing out as well, Ben said, "It'll only be a minute, guys. I've just got a question for Grandpa."

"Hey, kids!" Max said when he saw the two young foxlike beings running towards him. The sound of his familiar voice calmed both of them down more than they would admit.

Gwen looked worriedly over her shoulder, to where she could see what had to be her parents peeking out the window of the house. She gulped. Another fox-face like Ben, Carl and Sandra (her father, she guessed,) and a giraffe with purple spots going up its neck (her mother, she feared,) eyed her with relief. _'They probably heard about the robbery at the mall,'_ Gwen thought to herself.

"Grrrr, like our lives aren't already messed up!" Ben fumed. Max chuckled at the adolescent growl.

"Could be worse, Ben," he said. "This could have made the Omnitrix go nuts, as well." Ben hurriedly put a paw over the face of the otherwise-unaltered alien device. "Soooo, any theories?"

"Only one," Gwen growled as well. "Animo."

"We'll check on that first thing tomorrow," Max said.

"Uh, second, Grandpa. We've still got one more day of school before Christmas break, remember?" Max and Gwen both sighed. Leave it to poor struggling Ben to have to at least maintain perfect attendance to keep his grades up.

"Alright, I'll pick you two up from school, then, and we'll go from there." Max looked at both his sons and their wives quickly. "Don't worry about your parents. I'll tell them you two just remembered a very special Christmas gift you wanted to get for them all, but it's out of town."

"Aw, _maannnn,"_ Ben groaned. "That means we'll actually have to _get_ them something, now. _More_ shopping." He growled under his breath again, and Max laughed.

"Suck it up, Ultradoofus," Gwen hissed at him. "It's all in a day's work for a hero. Either way, we're on the road as soon as possible." Ben just growled louder. He hated it even more when Gwen got practical.

"So, bring our allowances, and clothes for when we turn back, huh?" he asked, and Max nodded.

"Go on, you two. I'll see you right after the last bell tomorrow. Oh, and Ben?" Grandfather and grandson exchanged serious looks now. "If any of the other Plumbers are aware of the change, reassure them, but tell them to keep it quiet. We'll handle this as quickly as possible, but …" Max sighed. "We have to do what we can to avoid a panic. Agreed?" Both kids just nodded, and scurried off to their respective parents, Gwen still having trouble with the new mode of locomotion.


End file.
